The present invention relates in general to fabrication equipment and in particular to a new and useful coordinate measuring apparatus which permits rapid and accurate measurement of a workpiece while maintaining maximum accessability to the workpiece.
The growing use of numerical control for machining operations with complex machining patterns has made it possible to provide even an individual or small-to-medium scale series manufacture (mass production) of prismatic workpieces. The requirements on high quality of the products entail the difficult problem of measuring the workpiece in a way which is fast and reliable and can be performed with universal measuring means. Another requirement is the detection of imperfections in machining, as far as possible, instantly after the respective operations, to introduce a compensation during the following steps.
In the course of the last years, the coordinate measuring technique has proven to be an irreplacable and economical system. To make such a technique more flexible, however, certain features still require improvement. This particularly applies to a shortening of the start-up and auxiliary times, an increase in the measuring speed and compatibility and interlinkage with machine tools.